I
t was impossible for a fourth-grade Camdyn Nelson to quell the flames that raged within her. There are six elementary schools in Greenwich, Connecticut, and as far as she was concerned, she attended the only one without a bike rack.
She didn’t necessarily need the rack. Camdyn lived about a mile from the Glenville School, so taking the bus wasn’t a hassle. Her frustration was more a matter of principle. In her eyes, it was unfair everyone else had the option to bike.
After consulting with her parents, Camdyn emailed Glenville principal Marc D’Amico to push for the installation of a bike rack. She even offered to fundraise for it.
The rack was added within months, upon which Camdyn enlisted dozens of classmates to bike with her to school.
“She always wanted to be right,” Mackenzie Nelson, Camdyn’s sister, said. “Things had to be her way growing up.”
With her determination, she mirrored the same leadership qualities that always drew her to the point guard position, which she’ll now play at the Division I level. In her illustrious high school career at St. Luke’s School (Connecticut), those traits propelled the Syracuse four-star commit to Gatorade Connecticut Player of the Year honors.
Playing point guard requires a particular kind of personality — a delicate balance of assertiveness and selflessness. It was Camdyn’s selflessness that pushed her to fight for Glenville’s bike rack. It was her assertiveness that pushed her to challenge D’Amico to install it.
“She makes her teammates better,” said Kelly Guarino, Camdyn’s AAU coach with the Empire Blue Flames. “That’s so rare in this day, because I feel like everyone wants iso as a point guard, and no one wants a true point guard anymore.”
SU’s storied point guard history began in the early 2000s, when three-time All-Big East selection Julie McBride commanded its offense. Alexis Peterson and Tiana Mangakahia later emerged as All-Atlantic Coast Conference performers for the Orange throughout the 2010s. And when head coach Felisha Legette-Jack took over in 2022, she added to that list by bringing along Dyaisha Fair from Buffalo.
Dominique Camp, SU’s last point guard who failed to make an offensive impact, has since graduated, opening the position once again. As Camdyn enters her freshman year at Syracuse, everyone around her is convinced she has the potential to reestablish its heritage of elite floor generals.
“We see where (Fair and Georgia Woolley’s competitiveness) took them in their career. I think Cam is on the right step,” SU assistant coach Khyreed Carter said. “Because I think, to be honest, she works a little harder than they did at this point in their career.”
It’s a tall task for a freshman, especially one who just entered college at 17. But Camdyn’s about as prepared for it as any 17-year-old could be. After all, she spent her childhood cutting her teeth against ACC competition.
Camdyn Nelson holds up her Gatorade Connecticut Player of the Year banner. Nelson is the first Syracuse commit to win Gatorade Player of the Year honors since Julianna Walker (Washington) in 2020. Courtesy of Drury Nelson
Growing up, the Nelsons’ driveway hosted countless battles between Camdyn and Mackenzie, now a redshirt sophomore point guard at Virginia Tech. Mackenzie refused to let up, relentlessly trying to humble her sister. She says she might have lost once.
Camdyn was “salty” after each defeat, giving her family the silent treatment and ignoring her parents’ — Robbie and Drury Nelson’s — assurances that the competition would make her better. She didn’t want to hear it. She lost.
In middle school, after years of tears shed on the pavement, Camdyn refused to face Mackenzie. She preferred to work on her shot alone in the driveway.
Yet, despite the bitterness associated with those matchups, Camdyn held no animosity toward her sister. If anything, she aspired to emulate Mackenzie at every turn.
“I looked up to her all the time and wanted to be just like her,” Camdyn said. “(I) wanted to accomplish what she’s accomplished, wanted to learn from her, grow from her.”
When she started looking for AAU programs as a third grader, Camdyn followed Mackenzie to the Blue Flames, a club based out of Westchester, New York. She was also set on following her sister’s footsteps in high school, forgoing public school to play at St. Luke’s.
St. Luke’s head coach Matt Ward didn’t know that, though. As an eighth grader, Camdyn and her family visited St. Luke’s for an interview. After Ward caught wind of the visit, he decided to deliver the final pitch.
He dropped by the admissions office and spent minutes chatting with the Nelsons, selling Camdyn on the benefits of St. Luke’s, which she had already committed to. A child of few words, she sat there silently, smiling politely as Ward delivered his spiel. He was dumbfounded.
“What are you laughing at?” Ward asked her, half-jokingly.
She couldn’t bring herself to answer.
“She’s coming,” Robbie replied on her behalf. “She’s already coming.”
Camdyn’s selflessness was on full display once she arrived at St. Luke’s, even to a fault. Because the Storm had a roster full of seniors and two upperclassman point guards — Mackenzie and current Northwestern senior Caroline Lau — Ward inserted Camdyn into the starting lineup in a different position. But she avoided handling the ball, often deferring to her sister and Lau.
Joe Zhao | Senior Staff Photographer
The duo approached Ward, telling him they wanted Camdyn on-ball more. They felt the offense operated more efficiently with her as a facilitator. Everyone felt an unshakable sense she was holding herself back from becoming an elite point guard.
“For me and my wife, it was just frustrating,” Robbie said. “I think she just felt like, ‘No, that’s my big sister, this is her junior and senior year, and I’m gonna let her do her thing.’”
Nevertheless, Mackenzie thrived with Camdyn in the starting lineup. Mackenzie led St. Luke’s to two consecutive Fairchester Athletic Association championships, won the New England Preparatory School Athletic Council Class B Championship as a senior and closed her career by claiming Gatorade Connecticut Player of the Year honors in both her junior and senior seasons.
Once she graduated, however, everything changed. Ward decided to leave — replaced by Kwame Burwell — and Camdyn entered her junior year as the lone returning starter from the Storm’s previously experience-laden roster.
Someone had to take the lead.
“We were all just looking forward to the fact (Camdyn) could step up,” St. Luke’s assistant coach Jen Pokorney said. “There was nothing holding her back at that point, so she had to shoot.”
Left with no choice but to be selfish, Camdyn finally developed into the alpha St. Luke’s needed. She averaged nearly 21 points per game as a junior, taking home NEPSAC Class B Player of the Year honors — per Burwell — and almost singlehandedly willing the Storm to an FAA final appearance. In Burwell’s opinion, she should’ve been the Gatorade Connecticut Player of the Year in that season, too.
But Camdyn was never one to obsess over accolades. She scored her 1,000th career point in the winter of her senior year, an and-1 layup tucked into a 36-point road performance against St. George’s (Rhode Island). The team wanted to keep it under wraps, hoping to celebrate her at St. Luke’s next home game, but Guarino inadvertently tipped her off with a text.
Camdyn knew what was coming. Her next home game was paused once she scored, and with balloons descending on the court, Burwell wrapped his point guard in an inescapable embrace.
“She committed to it,” Burwell said. “She wasn’t going to embarrass me and leave me out here hanging, so she was like, ‘Fine, I’ll do it.’”
No matter how hard Camdyn tried to avoid it, Burwell wanted to give his star the recognition she shied away from. After each of her performances in a senior campaign where she averaged over 17 points and almost three steals per game, he badgered the Gatorade committee with email updates.
Henry Daley | Asst. Digital Editor
His newsletters worked. One March morning, while vacationing in Punta Cana, Camdyn was awoken by her friends’ screams. Her coronation had come via email: Camdyn Nelson, Gatorade Connecticut Player of the Year.
It was an accomplishment she achieved with hardly a sip of water. In her time at St. Luke’s, Burwell said her beverages of choice were Starbucks and Dunkin’ drinks. His insistent pleas to hydrate always fell on deaf ears. She said she’d figure it out later.
A few weeks ago, she gave Burwell a call. It was uncharacteristic, he said. Usually, he was the one reaching out to her.
Camdyn wanted to know how St. Luke’s looked before the season, and she updated her old coach on her rigorous preseason practices. If you take her teammates’ words for it, the early returns have been nothing but excellent.
“That girl can see the floor. Oh, my goodness,” Syracuse guard Laila Phelia said. “Her passes, her sight, everything. She’s going to be one hell of a player.”
At a certain point during their conversation, Camdyn asked Burwell to guess what she was drinking. He noticed the water in her hand. A wave of satisfaction washed over him as he realized SU’s newest floor general was all grown-up.
Photograph courtesy of SU Athletics
Published on October 30, 2025 at 12:02 am